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18 November 2004

The woman presiding over national security on 9/11 - after she ignored specific warnings from the CIA, Richard Clark and Gary Hart among others about Al Queda flying planes into buildings on US soil - could be held personally responsible for the towers' collapse; the deaths, destruction and economic devastation 9/11 incurred; and the war in which the US is now headily pitched which apparently avenges that attack. However Condi's criminal negligence has been extremely profitable for the military-banking complex she represents. No wonder she has been slated to become secretary of state.

Stephen J. Hadley, who President Bush picked Tuesday to to replace Dr. Rice as
national security advisor, worked for both Cheney and
Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz during President George H.W.
Bush's administration. He has argued for broadening the use of nuclear
weapons to include deterrence against "weapons of mass destruction." Can you imagine if they'd tried to destroy Iraq's "WMD" reserves with nukes?

07 November 2004

At least another Bush term bodes well for the prospect of engaging progressive politics. The win did not surprise CQ - we do our best not to underestimate the lengths to which dictators will go to ensure themselves another 20 years, much less 4, and well we know that half the USA is more or less both illiterate and Born Again. However the results did reignite our curiosity about the extent to which Diebold's electronic voting systems colored the result.

Some of the sources we expect to help sort out what occurred at the polls include Bev Harris of Blackbox who famously began her investigations into the duplicity afoot in evoting ages ago, as documented in this Wired article. Evoting Experts seem to be keeping close tabs on the situation. We also look forward to Votergate, a documentary about the fiasco due out soon, with a score by CQ idol and rock god Wayne Kramer of MC5. A New york attorney who spent a few days working on the election in Ohio, Ray Beckerman reported that he witnessed voters waiting

for as much as 10 hours, and their voting was concluded at about 3 am. The reason this occurred was that they had 1 voting station per 1000 voters, while the adjacent precinct had 1 voting station per 184. Both precincts were within the same county, and managed by the same county board of elections. The difference between them is that the privileged polling place was in a rural, solidly Republican, area, while the one with long lines was in the college town of Gambier, OH.

Touch screen voting machines in Youngstown, OH were registering "George W. Bush" when people pressed "John F. Kerry" ALL DAY LONG. This was reported immediately after the polls opened, and reported over and over again throughout the day, and yet the bogus machines were inexplicably kept in use THROUGHOUT THE DAY.

Clearly, Beckerman's precinct was anything but unique as far as vote skullduggery was concerned. As even the NY Times concedes, albeit cautiously:

An electronic voting machine in hotly contested Ohio added 3,893 votes to President Bush's tally in a suburban Columbus precinct, even though there are just 800 voters there. The error was discovered in preliminary vote counts from Tuesday night, and local officials say it would have been caught in any case and corrected in the final count now under way.
...
Preliminary counts show Mr. Bush won Ohio by about 137,000 votes out of roughly 5.5 million cast.
...
But all problems so far fall into a class described by Doug Chapin, director of the Election Reform Information Project, as "no big and lots of littles," with no discernible effect on the outcome.

Progressive linesman Daily Kos is having a ball with more numbers that all too enigmatically did not compute. These from Florida:

7,355,296 (2004) - 5,963,657 (2000) = 1,392,639 new voters (99% precincts counted, no provisionals or absentees). So, we have 1.39 million new voters, and Kerry loses by 376,923 votes? Thus, he lost an overwhelming majoirty of them, or he lost an overwhelming majority of regular voters - much, much more than Gore lost.
We have 77,197 fewer third party votes, but Kerry loses the vast majority of these? Exit polling numbers show that Kerry had more Hispanic and Cuban support than Gore did, and Kerry lost? Most exit polls in Florida showed Kerry leading, yet he loses by a massive 5%? All this after an incredibly failed presidency? After looking at these numbers, I can come to only one conclusion. The Diebold machines were rigged. There is no way provisional or absentee ballot are going to make up the 376,923 votes - unless a LOT of people were challenged in the urban areas and had to fill out provisionals. These Florida numbers just don't make sense.

Thom Hartmann at Common Dreams is on top of the case as well and yesterday published a piece with more evidence of hacking in Florida.

In Baker County, for example, with 12,887 registered voters, 69.3% of them Democrats and 24.3% of them Republicans, the vote was only 2,180 for Kerry and 7,738 for Bush, the opposite of what is seen everywhere else in the country where registered Democrats largely voted for Kerry. In Dixie County, with 4,988 registered voters, 77.5% of them Democrats and a mere 15% registered as Republicans, only 1,959 people voted for Kerry, but 4,433 voted for Bush. The pattern repeats over and over again - but only in the counties where optical scanners were used. Franklin County, 77.3% registered Democrats, went 58.5% for Bush. Holmes County, 72.7% registered Democrats, went 77.25% for Bush.

29 October 2004

As War in Context notes, the New Scientist reports that Bush's coalition forces (don't forget Poland!) have likely killed 200,000 civilians in Iraq.

"The most common cause of death is as a direct result of violence, mostly caused by coalition air strikes, reveals the study of almost 1000 households scattered across Iraq...The figure of 100,000 is based on "conservative assumptions", notes Les Roberts at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Baltimore, US, who led the study. That estimate excludes Falluja, a hotspot for violence. If the data from this town is included, the study points to about 200,000 excess deaths since the outbreak of war."

May the senseless killing cease as soon as Bush leaves office and may that happen with all deliberate speed.

08 October 2004

It's one thing to see blinking images of war culled from digital TV broadcasts, but the full color celluloid images of amputees trying on new prosthetic limbs as war profiteers proclaim treasure-to-be and coffin makers explaining the small ones (for children) as a U.S. General justifies death ("The Oriental doesnt put the same high price on life as the Westerner") - these have a different impact.

Shot on location in SouthEast Asia, France and the US ages before the idea of 'embedded' journalists, Hearts and Minds won the 1974 Oscar for documentaries. An amalgam of news reports, stock footage and striking, original color film, this is the kind of movie no one forgets. "If I were to pick the one film that inspired me to pick up a camera, it is Hearts and Minds, a film that remains every bit as relevant today," said Michael Moore.

Director Peter Davis captured gangly, indifferent airmen as they visited a Saigon brothel. A South Vietnamese ex-president-cum-Paris restaurateur told how the U.S. made him quit. An ex-French Foreign Minister revealed that the U.S. offered his country two A-Bombs to solve the Indochina problem. After 30 years all prints had faded, but Academy Film Archives' two-year restoration has brought Hearts and Minds back to its original state for a return to theaters.

Davis and Vietnam Veterans of America Foundation President Bobby Muller will be present for a preview screening and discussion in Washington DC on Saturday, October 16 at 7:30pm at the AFI Silver. The two will be joined by cinematographer Richard Pearce for the opening at New York's Film Forum on Friday, October 22 for the 7:30 show and available for Q&As afterwards.